“Saving Face,” the 2012 HBO short film on brutal acid attacks on women in Pakistan, this week won Emmy statuettes for Best Documentary and Outstanding Editing: Documentary and Long Form at the 34th Annual News & Documentary Emmy Awards ceremony at New York’s Lincoln Center. Junge and co-director Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy and cameraman Asad Faruqi accepted the awards.

Among the networks, CBS was the big winner of the news/documentary Emmys with 12 wins, half of them for “60 Minutes.” PBS was second most lauded with nine Emmy wins (mostly for “Frontline”), followed by HBO with six. The full list of winners is on the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences website.

“Like no other film I’ve made, this one has a life which continues to gain momentum even two years after we made it. It’s showing around the world right now — including in South Asia — and the continuing accolades are helping to fuel that. Acid violence is certainly more discussed here and abroad, and if we’ve played some small role in that, it’s very satisfying.” Junge said.

“And for the rest of my life, I get to call myself and Oscar and Emmy winning filmmaker…how cool is that?”

Showtime hopes the Emmy buzz will carry its freshman series “Homeland” into an even more widely admired sophomore season. The series was the headliner at Sunday’s Emmy Awards, garnering four big wins and most of the acclaim. The timing is good to introduce newcomers to the series and refresh returning viewers with a day-long marathon of season 1 before Sunday’s season 2 premiere.

From Showtime:
Following this past Sunday’s historic Emmy® wins for Outstanding Drama Series, Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series for Claire Danes, Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series for Damian Lewis, along with Emmys for Casting, Single-Camera Picture Editing and Writing, SHOWTIME invites viewers to catch up on its hit drama series HOMELAND. The network will air a marathon of the entire first season on Saturday, September 29th, beginning at 12 PM ET/PT to 12:30 AM ET/PT. Season two of HOMELAND premieres Sunday, September 30th at 10 PM ET/PT

The Academy for Television Arts and Sciences’ Creative Arts Emmys were awarded Saturday night, the annual precursors to the Primetime Emmy Awards (airing Sunday on ABC, locally at 6 p.m. on Channel 7). The writers of “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” won for Outstanding Writing for a Variety Series, among them Denver’s Hallie Haglund.

Haglund, born and raised in Denver, was a member of Yale University’s all-female sketch group, the Sphincter Troupe. After graduating in 2005, she lived briefly in L.A., working as a page for NBC Studios and studying improvisation at UCBTLA. She joined “The Daily Show” in 2006. She has appeared with several improv troupes.

After years of watching cable nab the bulk of the primetime Emmy nominations, broadcast TV this time is a serious contender in all major categories.
“Glee,” “Lost,” “The Good Wife,” “Modern Family,” “The Office,” “30 Rock,” “Parks and Recreation,” “New Adventures of Old Christine,” “Two and a Half Men,” “Friday Night Lights,” and “Law & Order: SVU” were well represented.
See the complete list.
Consider this a major resurgence for the broadcast nets.
For those keeping score, Fox’s “Glee” lead the pack of regular series with 19 nominations, followed by AMC’s “Mad Men” with 17 nominations, NBC’s “30 Rock” with 15 nominations, and ABC’s “Modern Family,” with 14.
The 62nd Annual Primetime Emmy Awards will air live on NBC on Sunday, Aug. 29 with late-night host Jimmy Fallon as emcee.

UPDATED: It’s official. This year’s Emmycast was the lowest rated in history. Scoring a 3.8 rating and 9 share (or percent of people watching) in the national adults 18-49 demo, it earned the distinction of being the lowest in Nielsen’s recorded People Meter history.

No surprise, Sunday’s Emmy telecast was a bomb in the ratings. The five “reality”-show hosts hired for name recognition–on a night when less well known cable fare won the big awards–were no help at all.

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ABC’s broadcast pulled only a 3.8 rating/9 share in the crucial 18-to-49-year-old demographic, a 12% drop from last year’s telecast. NBC won the night with a football game, according to preliminary Nielsen data.

The question, once final data are in: was this the lowest rated Emmy show in history? Until now, the record low was 1990’s show on Fox which drew only 12.3 million viewers. Based on the overnight numbers, Sunday’s show reached only about 12.2 million viewers. Final numbers will be available tomorrow.

For the first time, the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences released a top-10 list of nominees in advance of the July 17 crack-‘o-dawn announcement of the actual nominees. The idea is to get the list out before it’s leaked, per tradition.

The headline out of the top-10 list is the inclusion of two basic cable series, AMC’s “Mad Men” and FX’s “Damages.” While premium cable has had many entries on the list, this is a first for the basic channels.

Top 10 Comedy Series Finalists:
Curb Your Enthusiasm
Entourage
Family Guy
Flight of the Conchords
The Office
Pushing Daisies
30 Rock
Two and a Half Men
Ugly Betty
WeedsTop 10 Drama Series Finalists:
Boston Legal
Damages
Dexter
Friday Night Lights
Grey’s Anatomy
House
Lost
Mad Men
The Tudors
The Wire

The 2008 NATAS regional Emmy Awards announced Wednesday contain an interesting omission for a Denver station:

In the contest for best evening newscast in a large market, KCNC-Channel 4 was nominated for its 5 and 10 p.m. newscast; KMGH-Channel 7 was nominated for its 10 p.m. program; KDVR-Channel 31 was nominated for coverage of church shootings. They’ll compete against KWTV in Oklahoma City. So what happened to KUSA-Channel 9?

KUSA got its share of nods in other categories, but that big one seems peculiar.

Meanwhile Channel 9 swept most other categories, winning 67 nominations total. Channel 7 picked up 31 noms; Channel 4 earned 25; Channel 31 earned 13. The awards will be announced July 19. Ward Lucas of KUSA will be honored for his three decades on Denver TV.

Sunday’s weak Emmy Awards show on Fox scored the second smallest audience on record, averaging 13.1 million viewers, according to preliminary nationals from Nielsen. That’s down from the 16.2 million NBC drew for its late August show last year, way down from the 18.7 million who tuned in on CBS two years ago.

Joanne Ostrow has been watching TV since before "reality" required quotation marks. "Hill Street Blues" was life-changing. If Dickens, Twain or Agatha Christie were alive today, they'd be writing for television. And proud of it.